— You were raised in New York, what was your childhood like growing up here? When do you think your attention was grasped by sculpture and making things with your hands?‍

I grew up on Long Island then moved to Brooklyn when I was 18- years-old. My childhood was your standard suburban middle-class, mostly-white experience. I was in my own little world most of the time. I loved nature, animals and creating.

I have always made things with my hands since as far back as I can remember. My mom was an art teacher and encouraged me to create. However I didn’t realize I could actually make a career of it until I was much older. It wasn’t until my ex-wife and I started a business making furniture and textiles in 2007 that I started to connect the dots. When we split up and went our separate ways in 2014. I started working with a weaving collective weaving couture jackets from scratch. The process of putting together shapes upon shapes to create something multi -dimensional shed light on a new way of seeing things for me. The combination of my past work experiences and my desire to create something new gave me the confidence to pursue what I envisioned.

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— And you were born in Brazil. Do you find that the Brazilian culture inspires your work and way of living in any way as an adult?

Yes I was born in Brazil but have no roots there. My father is Russian and he and his parents entered Brazil as refugees from China where my dad was born. My mother is mostly Italian, born in Scotland. Her parents went to Brazil for a honeymoon when they were 19 and decided to move there years later. We moved to the U.S. when I was 6-years-old because my parents wanted a better education for us, but went back to Brazil every few years to visit family.

My time in Brazil definitely influenced my work and shaped the way I live too. I have early memories of admiring crystals and gemstones, which are abundant in Brazil, laying on cool stone floors when I was hot and tracing the veining patterns in the marble, the smell and feel of 70’s leather chairs and couches, and handmade wood furniture. Going to the market on the weekends and feeling my way through all of these rich vibrant sounds, sights, smells and experiences are still with me. I have very fond memories of these times.

— Your love of natural materials is evident in the way in which you handle them. We’re curious to know how your process of carving with chainsaws came about, and who taught you these practical skills, if anyone at all.

After I had my twins I felt a need to try something new and do something more physical. I was weaving for so long, and holding babies, rocking babies, and was just so tired of sitting so I started taking some wood carving classes. I liked carving but quickly realized that I wanted to go bigger. I wasn’t quite satisfied with small scale detailed carving. Around that time a neighbor had taken down a maple tree in their backyard. So I grabbed some of their logs, rolled them into our basement and decided that the only way to get what I wanted to achieve was with a chainsaw. So I got an electric chainsaw and started carving in our basement. I approached these pieces with absolutely no expectation. I didn’t even intend to show anyone what I was making. I just had a great sense of urgency to create, still do. In one of my favorite books ‘Ninth Street Women’ by Mary Gabriel there’s a quote from Charles Baudelaire that deeply resonated with me about the frenzy of the artist…

‘is the fear of not going fast enough, of letting the phantom escape before the synthesis has been extracted and pinned down; it is that terrible fear which takes possession of all great artists and gives them such a passionate desire to become masters of every means of expression so that the orders of the brain may never be perverted by the hesitations of the hand and that finally...ideal execution, may become as unconscious and spontaneous as is digestion for a healthy man after dinner.’

I needed to extract and pin down something I just wasn’t sure what it was yet.

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— In saying that, your end results, inspired by the female form, are surprisingly sensual. Chainsawing could be seen as a stereotypical masculine approach, but it feels like you are wanting to change that narrative. What are your thoughts on this?

Most of my work is inspired by nature and the human form is nature as well. If you look you can see human forms everywhere in nature - mountains, trees, shells, flowers, bugs, leaves, clouds. The more you look the more you’ll find! I enjoy making these connections and recreating them in my sculptures.

Woodworking in general is typically a white-male dominated field, but then again most everything is. I don’t really think of chainsawing as gender based. I am just a sculptor that happens to work with a chainsaw as one of my tools. Many sculptors that work with logs have to use a chainsaw at some point.

But when I first started sculpting it was and still is important to me to create my own language around my materials so my true voice can come through. To me that meant exploring and experimenting on my own and not following traditional stereotypically male opinions (and there are many) on what the right way is to handle wood and stone. I wanted to figure it out for myself first and if I still couldn’t achieve what I wanted then ask questions and watch you tube videos if needed :)

I do however think that we should be more mindful about gendering. If we label something that is non-traditionally women’s work as women’s work, such as chainsawing, we are still perpetuating the narrative that this is unusual work for women. Instead, we could just drop the gender altogether and call it an artist’s work or sculptors work. That way it normalizes the work for all genders and everything in between leaving room for everyone, no exclusions. Thus paving the way for our children to be who they want to be without limitations.

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— The shapes of your pieces all seem to talk to each other, where does your inspiration come from for this, or is it more about letting the material lead you?

It’s a bit of both. I often have a plan for shapes I want to execute but things don’t always work out as I initially intended. Sometimes the stone breaks or the wood has a big knot in it or the pieces just have a beautiful shape already that I choose to accentuate instead. I usually make a grouping of wood pieces and then a grouping of stone pieces and then start arranging and stacking to see what fits best. The sculptures just naturally come together from there and then I can relax.

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— Can you tell us about your daily life, now living and working upstate?

It’s pretty simple and basic which was a choice for us coming from the hustle of living in Brooklyn. Both my partner Doug and I have studios on our property. We wake up around 6 am, have coffee and get the kids ready for school. Doug drops them off and I take that time for my spiritual practice so I can clear my head for work. Then I get my work clothes on and go to my studio, which is in an old barn right next door. I work until about 3pm, get cleaned up and dressed in regular clothes and go to pick up the kids, or if Doug picks them up I keep working. We have an early dinner because we have little kids and get them to bed by 8. Then Doug and I hang out and catch up on the day. Doug and I are also renovating the old farmhouse we live in on our spare time, if we have any.

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— How did you feel on the Anaak shoot? Did any of the garments shape or colour inspire you to move and feel differently?

I felt special, I felt lighter. I’m usually either in heavy, dusty work clothes or sweat pants so it felt good to put something different on. I love the airy feel of the cotton gauze fabric and the color made me feel like I was manifesting hot summer days at an ashram listening to Alice Coltrane’s World Spirituality Classics album.